Ealer took a seat on the bench, panting and breathless. The black phantom assumed the wheel without saying anything, steadied the waltzing steamer with a turn or two, and then stood at ease, coaxing her a little to this side and then to that, as gently and as sweetly as if the time had been noonday. When Ealer observed this marvel of steering, he wished he had not confessed! He stared, and wondered, and finally said —
‘Well, I thought I knew how to steer a steamboat, but that was another mistake of mine.’
X. said nothing, but went serenely on with his work. He rang for the leads; he rang to slow down the steam; he worked the boat carefully and neatly into invisible marks, then stood at the center of the wheel and peered blandly out into the blackness, fore and aft, to verify his position; as the leads shoaled more and more, he stopped the engines entirely, and the dead silence and suspense of ‘drifting’ followed when the shoalest water was struck, he cracked on the steam, carried her handsomely over, and then began to work her warily into the next system of shoal marks; the same patient, heedful use of leads and engines followed, the boat slipped through without touching bottom, and entered upon the third and last intricacy of the crossing; imperceptibly she moved through the gloom, crept by inches into her marks, drifted tediously till the shoalest water was cried, and then, under a tremendous head of steam, went swinging over the reef and away into deep water and safety!
Ealer let his long-pent breath pour out in a great, relieving sigh, and said —
‘That’s the sweetest piece of piloting that was ever done on the Mississippi River! I wouldn’t believed it could be done, if I hadn’t seen it.’
There was no reply, and he added —
‘Just hold her five minutes longer, partner, and let me run down and get a cup of coffee.’
A minute later Ealer was biting into a pie, down in the ‘texas,’ and comforting himself with coffee. Just then the night watchman happened in, and was about to happen out again, when he noticed Ealer and exclaimed —
‘Who is at the wheel, sir?’
‘X.’
‘Dart for the pilothouse, quicker than lightning!’
The next moment both men were flying up the pilothouse companion way, three steps at a jump! Nobody there! The great steamer was whistling down the middle of the river at her own sweet will! The watchman shot out of the place again; Ealer seized the wheel, set an engine back with power, and held his breath while the boat reluctantly swung away from a ‘towhead’ which she was about to knock into the middle of the Gulf of Mexico!
By and by the watchman came back and said —
‘Didn’t that lunatic tell you he was asleep, when he first came up here?’
‘NO.’
‘Well, he was. I found him walking along on top of the railings just as unconcerned as another man would walk a pavement; and I put him to bed; now just this minute there he was again, away astern, going through that sort of tightrope deviltry the same as before.’
‘Well, I think I’ll stay by, next time he has one of those fits. But I hope he’ll have them often. You just ought to have seen him take this boat through Helena crossing. I never saw anything so gaudy before. And if he can do such gold-leaf, kid-glove, diamond-breastpin piloting when he is sound asleep, what COULDN’T he do if he was dead!’
CHAPTER 9
Sounding
WHEN the river is very low, and one’s steamboat is ‘drawing all the water’ there is in the channel, — or a few inches more, as was often the case in the old times, — one must be painfully circumspect in his piloting. We used to have to ‘sound’ a number of particularly bad places almost every trip when the river was at a very low stage.
Sounding is done in this way. The boat ties up at the shore, just above the shoal crossing; the pilot not on watch takes his ‘cub’ or steersman and a picked crew of men (sometimes an officer also), and goes out in the yawl — provided the boat has not that rare and sumptuous luxury, a regularly-devised ‘sounding-boat’ — and proceeds to hunt for the best water, the pilot on duty watching his movements through a spyglass, meantime, and in some instances assisting by signals of the boat’s whistle, signifying ‘try higher up’ or ‘try lower down;’ for the surface of the water, like an oil-painting, is more expressive and intelligible when inspected from a little distance than very close at hand. The whistle signals are seldom necessary, however; never, perhaps, except when the wind confuses the significant ripples upon the water’s surface. When the yawl has reached the shoal place, the speed is slackened, the pilot begins to sound the depth with a pole ten or twelve feet long, and the steersman at the tiller obeys the order to ‘hold her up to starboard;’ or, ‘let her fall off to larboard;’{footnote [The term ‘larboard’ is never used at sea now, to signify the left hand; but was always used on the river in my time]} or ‘steady — steady as you go.’
When the measurements indicate that the yawl is approaching the shoalest part of the reef, the command is given to ‘ease all!’ Then the men stop rowing and the yawl drifts with the current. The next order is, ‘Stand by with the buoy!’ The moment the shallowest point is reached, the pilot delivers the order, ‘Let go the buoy!’ and over she goes. If the pilot is not satisfied, he sounds the place again; if he finds better water higher up or lower down, he removes the buoy to that place. Being finally satisfied, he gives the order, and all the men stand their oars straight up in the air, in line; a blast from the boat’s whistle indicates that the signal has been seen; then the men ‘give way’ on their oars and lay the yawl alongside the buoy; the steamer comes creeping carefully down, is pointed straight at the buoy, husbands her power for the coming struggle, and presently, at the critical moment, turns on all her steam and goes grinding and wallowing over the buoy and the sand, and gains the deep water beyond. Or maybe she doesn’t; maybe she ‘strikes and swings.’ Then she has to while away several hours (or days) sparring herself off.
Sometimes a buoy is not laid at all, but the yawl goes ahead, hunting the best water, and the steamer follows along in its wake. Often there is a deal of fun and excitement about sounding, especially if it is a glorious summer day, or a blustering night. But in winter the cold and the peril take most of the fun out of it.
A buoy is nothing but a board four or five feet long, with one end turned up; it is a reversed schoolhouse bench, with one of the supports left and the other removed. It is anchored on the shoalest part of the reef by a rope with a heavy stone made fast to the end of it. But for the resistance of the turned-up end of the reversed bench, the current would pull the buoy under water. At night, a paper lantern with a candle in it is fastened on top of the buoy, and this can be seen a mile or more, a little glimmering spark in the waste of blackness.
Nothing delights a cub so much as an opportunity to go out sounding. There is such an air of adventure about it; often there is danger; it is so gaudy and man-of-warlike to sit up in the stern-sheets and steer a swift yawl; there is something fine about the exultant spring of the boat when an experienced old sailor crew throw their souls into the oars; it is lovely to see the white foam stream away from the bows; there is music in the rush of the water; it is deliciously exhilarating, in summer, to go speeding over the breezy expanses of the river when the world of wavelets is dancing in the sun. It is such grandeur, too, to the cub, to get a chance
